Miriam's Song

I'm always amazed when her teachers comment on L's quiet shyness and reserve because whenever I'm alone with her the flood gates are opened and I get a verbal deluge of Biblical proportions. I've had to work late a lot last week and whenever I have a week like that the kids are particularly amped around me on Saturday morning when they realize I'm staying home.

I woke up early this morning as is usually the case, but L was up soon there after. As soon as she knew she had an audience all to herself the chatter switch was flipped and the banter began. She goes on in an existentialist stream-of-consciousness kind of thing, jumping subjects like hopscotch. She lights on nothing for more than a single comment and is flittering off on some other topic like a drunken butterfly. Here's a small sampling of this morning's offerings:

• I love clams; they are delicious. But we eat frosted mini-wheats for breakfast, not clams.
  
• Daddy, your head looks like an Easter egg. It's all round and shiny. Well, it's not your head - there are bones under your head.
  
• Mommy is silly. Daddy, is Mommy silly or crazy, or both?
  
• I have a bone in my heart - it's right there, see? [pointing to her ribs]
  
• Daddy's birthday is the first one in the Perkins family. Then N, then L. Mommy is last. Poor Mommy.
  
• Someday I'm going to have a baby in my tummy. Or maybe a baby or a doggie or kitty. I won't have a doggie in my tummy; it might poop in there.
  

Trust me. This was sustained for an hour or more.

L came running up to me having come straight from the bathroom where she was doing unspeakable things to her hair that will probably take several hours to clean up. It was all wet and gloopy. "Daddy, does my hair look like Belle's?"

Lately we've been spontaneously playing another game that just sort of happened. The kids will run in circles through the house (through our kitchen to our dinning room which joins the living room, on through the hallway and back into the kitchen). I'll be sitting at the computer in the kitchen and will randomly reach out and grab at them as they race by. If I snag one I will hold them tight until N says the magic words: "Pharaoh, let my people go!" at which point I'll release the struggling Israelite. L (a.k.a. Miriam) has slowly come to terms with the fact that Pharaoh won't listen to her pleas for release, but only heeds the word and authority of her brother Moses. Don't know exactly how this game came to be, but the kids love it.